There is NO Right Not To Be Offended

I've been a history buff for more than 40 years. I read "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" while most of my classmates were still reading "Hardy Boys" and "Nancy Drew". I've not only read the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, but I've studied the Federalist Papers and Anti-Federalist Papers, the biographies of most of the "Founding Fathers", and a large number of their other papers. I've never found anything in all those words that mentioned a right NOT to be offended.

Others must have found such a right, however. Michael Knight, a student at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas writes: "I just couldn't believe he took something like that and generalized it," said Knight, a recent UNLV graduate who received his Bachelor of Arts in Economy with a minor in Management. "I was shocked." .. Knight added that he felt Hoppe should go through mediation and sensitivity training so that in the future, he could avoid offending anyone else.

I find many things offensive, both in ordinary life and on the Web. I don't demand that people get "sensitivity training and mediation". I'm an adult - I can understand that some people have ideas different than mine, and that their ideas can and frequently are offensive. I'm sure I offend others. My response is, "That's life - get over it or get out of it".

We are human beings. Each of us is unique, and has a relatively unique outlook on life. We see things, interpret things, and hold beliefs based upon our history and where and what we've been to the point where we are today. We're not robots, all constructed exactly the same way. The diversity of individual thought, the uniqueness of individual response to stimulus, is what makes us human. Any attempt to suppress that behavior is an attempt to force intellectual sterility upon humanity, and should be seen as the tyranny it is. That's why "political correctness" is the most tyrannical aspect of existence inside the academic arena today.